Yesterday we reported that a 10-page document penned by an unnamed Google engineer titled “Google’s Ideological Echo Chamber” which criticized the company’s “left-leaning”, “anti-conservative” culture and called for replacing Google’s diversity initiatives with policies that encourage “ideological diversity” instead, led to angry outrage among fellow Google employees and Silicon Valley liberals. The document, published in its entirety by Gizmodo, quickly went “viral” both inside the company and within the broader Silicon Valley community.

The document’s author also wrote that employees with conservative political beliefs are discriminated against at Google and lamented about how “leftist” ideology is harmful. It argued that the company should have a more “open” culture where its viewpoint would be welcomed. The document said that improving racial and gender diversity is less important than making sure conservatives feel comfortable expressing themselves at work.

And, as of moments ago, the author of the memo – whose name has since been revealed as James Damore – has been fired.

According to Bloomberg, “Google has fired an employee who wrote an internal memo blasting the web company’s diversity policies, creating a firestorm across Silicon Valley.”

James Damore, the Google engineer who wrote the note, confirmed his dismissal in an email, saying that he had been fired for “perpetuating gender stereotypes.” A Google representative didn’t immediately return a request for comment.

Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai sent a note to employees on Monday, first reported by ReCode, that said portions of the employee’s memo “violate our Code of Conduct and cross the line by advancing harmful gender stereotypes in our workplace.” He did not, however, say at the time if the company was taking action against the employee.

As we explained yesterday, Damore’s 10-page memo accused Google of silencing conservative political opinions and argued that biological differences play a role in the shortage of women in tech and leadership positions.

It circulated widely inside the company and became public over the weekend, causing a furor that amplified the pressure on Google executives to take a more definitive stand.

After the controversy swelled, Danielle Brown, Google’s new vice president for diversity, integrity and governance, sent a statement to staff condemning Damore’s views and reaffirmed the company’s stance on diversity. In internal discussion boards, multiple employees said they supported firing the author, and some said they would not choose to work with him, according to postings viewed by Bloomberg News.

The memo and surrounding debate has come at an awkward time for Google which is currently fending off a lawsuit from the U.S. Department of Labor alleging the company systemically discriminates against women. Google has denied the charges, arguing that it doesn’t have a gender gap in pay, but has declined to share full salary information with the government. According to the company’s most recent demographic report, 69 percent of its workforce and 80 percent of its technical staff are male.

… let me say that we strongly support the right of Googlers to express themselves, and much of what was in that memo is fair to debate, regardless of whether a vast majority of Googlers disagree with it.

… So to be clear again, many points raised in the memo — such as the portions criticizing Google’s trainings, questioning the role of ideology in the workplace, and debating whether programs for women and underserved groups are sufficiently open to all — are important topics. The author had a right to express their views on those topics — we encourage an environment in which people can do this and it remains our policy to not take action against anyone for prompting these discussions.

… there are co-workers who are questioning whether they can safely express their views in the workplace (especially those with a minority viewpoint). They too feel under threat, and that is also not OK. People must feel free to express dissent.

As Garth Volbeck notes: “White supremacy is a man writing a ten-page memo explaining why he disagrees with you and actually expecting an argument in response.”

And the ass saw the angel of the Lord standing in the way, and his sword drawn in his hand: and the ass turned aside out of the way, and went into the field: and Balaam smote the ass, to turn her into the way.
–Numbers, 22:23

The notorious Google memo Gizmodo calls an “anti-diversity screed” (elsewhere it’s a “fulmination”, “sexist twaddle”, and, even, “lengthy”) is neither. It opens with a sort of standard genuflection to diversity that seems earnest enough (not that being earnest would be enough). Somehow despite seeing and outlining the impossibility of diversity as a reality, the author and his defenders accept its necessity as a goal. The goons who shut them down while shouting nonsense only look like the stupid ones. They get it: the way in which diversity efforts fail–women and minorities proving inadequate–reveals the absurdity and injustice of diversity as a goal.

“If we can’t have an honest discussion about this, then we can never truly solve the problem.” He pleads. But the real problem is we can’t have an honest discussion that doesn’t ultimately reveal there is no problem. Indeed, if the honesty goes long enough, we might find that diversity as an idea is the problem. Even, maybe, diversity is a problem. Monsters dwell here. That’s why you can’t even draw maps of this place.

The problem here is the problem with “white privilege” entire: if you accept the inherent value of enlightened Western values over ignorance and hunger, and you accept the idea that this West is nonetheless uniquely hostile to such as blacks (for one)–this dissonance is conventional opinion–then you necessarily imply blacks aren’t as well suited for enlightenment values. This is why we can’t have nice conversations. The floor always ends up strewn with our prettiest lies. But we should have them. For one thing, those enlightenment values are being pawned off to pay the interest on our debt to black America, as the West and the US are deformed to meet their cruder biases and values. From the black vantage, civil rights are rationalized ethnic warfare contorting the law and culture to conform to black values.

That’s why the line, for the moment, holds against honest public conversations about any of it. But social justice is like football. You have to move the ball. So its proponents keep advancing. Anything else is taking a knee, truth be damned.

If the memo author’s sentiments in favor of diversity are real, they are about to be a severe stress test such as an engineer can appreciate and understand. Of course all bets are off when we’re talking social justice. If the hammer comes down at Google–and the standard move is to double-down every time the Narrative is challenged: “sensitivity” training, firings, expansion of diversity efforts and staff–I suspect that faction of discontented White–and likely Asian–men will grow in size and impatience.

How big is the discontent? How “angry” are the white males? They’ve been incanting “white male anger” into the electronic ether so long they are about to conjure it up in reality. It’s long overdue. The scandal isn’t the excess of white male anger it’s the absence of it.

Consider the absurdity of Danielle Brown, thirty-something, riding her triumph in increasing “diversity” in just two years as diversity honcho at Intel (“…hit its goal of retaining diverse employees, with a 15 percent exit rate for women and people of color compare to a 15.5 percent exit rate for employees in majority groups”), without a technical background, dismissing out of hand the memo (which doesn’t deserve a link) because it’s inconsistent with the values and needs of the company at which she’s yet to occupy an office. In her role as the social justice equivalent of a Soviet political officer.

Her linkedin page suggests she was saved from having to rely on her own education in finance and sales by being plucked out of relative obscurity at the biotech firm Gilead (she was the bomb in Gilead) and put on the diversity fast track (Intel’s “accelerated leadership” program) in 2011. Six years later she’s a VP at Google, and if she doesn’t know computer code from the DaVinci Code it doesn’t matter; she’s in charge of the conversation. Nice work if you can get it.

That work involves maintaining a culture of shaming and coercion. The memo writer complains:

“While Google hasn’t harbored the violent leftists protests that we’re seeing at universities, the frequent shaming in TGIF and in our culture has created the same silence, psychologically unsafe environment.”
Update: The author has already been sacked.

That culture of shaming is going to have to get a lot harsher. I suspect Google will take measures to root out like-minded individuals where it can and rely on the power of the non-disclosure agreement. The company is on its way to becoming Scientology.